Jet fighters, 63% of the Swiss want to vote again
Keystone-SDA
Two out of three Swiss people want to vote again on the purchase of fighter jets for the air force, according to a representative poll published today by the information portal Infosperber.
In August, the Demoscope institute asked 1,005 people in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland the following question: ‘In the popular vote in 2020 on the purchase of new fighter planes, the Federal Council had guaranteed a maximum cost of CHF6 billion: do you think the vote should be repeated because of the considerable additional costs?’
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Of those polled, 63% answered yes, 31% no, and 6% did not express an opinion. No major differences were found between age groups and genders. On the other hand, the desire to return to the subject was significantly stronger in French-speaking Switzerland (76% yes) than in German-speaking Switzerland (58%).
On September 27, 2020, Swiss voters had narrowly approved the purchase with just 50.1% of the votes. In the Federal Council’s explanations that accompanied the ballot papers, the figure of CHF6 billion (about $7.5 billion) appeared several times.
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A note in the voting booklet also refers to inflation. According to Infosperber, taking inflation from 2018 into account, the amount would now be around CHF6.4 billion. At the moment, however, the Federal Council calculates that the costs for buying 36 fighter jets could reach up to CHF7.3 billion.
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Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac
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